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Elizabeth Chan Cracks the WLTW-FM Christmas Rotation

Every holiday season, New York radio station WLTW (a.k.a. 106.7 Lite FM) tinkers ever so slightly with its rotation of 24/7 Christmas music. If at all.

This season, a new voice is getting airplay alongside the three other artists added for 2014. Joining Band Aid 30, Seth MacFarlane and Idina Menzel is none other than Mediabistro success story Elizabeth Chan, the former Conde Nast employee who we wrote about this time last year.

“Just even learning that WLTW was going to add one of my songs, three years into writing Christmas music but really only two years into starting my company and songwriting business in earnest,” Chan tells FishbowlNY via telephone. “I was floored.”

“They’re the radio station that can make Christmas standards, because they’re really selective about the music that they play,” she adds. “It’s usually gold standards, so I am definitely an anomaly.”

Chan will also be performing live Monday night at Celsius in Bryant Park for 300 WLTW-FM listeners as they wrap pre-purchased gifts for children at the Bristol Myers Squibb Children’s Hospital at Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital. She is the only artist performing.

“Christmas music was a big thing with me growing up,” Chan recalls. “Once WLTW switched to all-Christmas, I would just leave it on. My parents would go nuts sometimes over this. But I would just have it on in my room, on my Walkman, 24-7. Me and my younger sister [now an attorney], we were quite obsessed.”

Each time WLTW plays “Christmas in the City,” Chan says online sales of the song spike. Also, since Chan’s piece of the musical merriment officially took hold earlier this month, her Facebook page likes have skyrocketed from around 1,000 to nearly 10,000.

“When my father bought his first video camera, I asked him to turn it on and said that I was now going to do a show for him,” Chan remembers. “I took over the living room and started to sing all my favorite Christmas carols. So this love for Christmas music runs very deep.”

Last Christmas season, Chan was away from the city on tour. Her latest single was largely sparked by people at that time asking her what it’s like to celebrate the holidays in Manhattan.

“The big snowflake on 57th Street…” explains Chan, a native of Battery Park City who still lives there. “That’s when I know I’m home for the holidays. I realized there were no Christmas songs about the snowflake. So I wanted to commemorate that, in my way.”

And the way things are going, we have no doubt that catching up on Chan’s annual achievements could become a FishbowlNY Christmas tradition.

“Mediabistro was so key to me, for many years. First, helping me find new jobs and then, as we talked about last year, launching me on this new adventure. I know that there are a lot of people out there in Mediabistroland that are constantly thinking, ‘Can I go after my dream or my passion?’”

“It’s not for the faint of heart,” she continues. “It’s a scary and very difficult road. The reason I started my own business is because there was no such business that existed. I found no record labels or publishing companies that were as committed to Christmas music as I was. So I had to kind of pave that road myself.”

“If you have something that you want to achieve, what’s the worse that can happen… If you try?”